Hello Justin, I am following the wikitravel discussion with interest. I'm curious whether you think that something about place-information is hard to provide as a balanced reference, or if it is specifically the model of a traditional 'travel guide' that concerns you.

I share some of your thoughts about traditional guides. I also think that many limitations of paper guides (e.g., arbitrary focus on a few things to do or see) may be remedied online. I have certainly used a guide for visiting a particular park which felt more like a comprehensive ref. about that swath of land (and the few human habitations on it). But there it didn't need to select; it simply indexed and provided information about all places to camp, contact numbers, maps, and sources online. –SJtalk 22:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Travel guide A good travel guide will be of the sort "X is the best Thai food in town", which is inherently POV. The NPOV way of doing that would be to say "X, Y, and Z all serve Thai food" but that's hardly useful and really is that even desirable when we have search engines? I definitely think that a travel guide is well-suited to an online format, probably even a wiki (the blue line bus will not be running on Thanksgiving, the post office closed and moved across town, etc.) but I don't really see this as being in line with the mission of providing quality reference material like the rest of the Wikimedia projects. I would entirely be in favor of interlinking (e.g.) Wikipedia with WikiTravel as users reading about a city on Wikipedia might want the kind of information that a travel guide gives. It would also be nice if WikiTravel freely used pictures from Commons, etc. But actually bringing it in the fold seems like a bad idea to me and as much as there is already a problem with advertising by way of Wikipedia, it would be grossly exacerbated by adding a travel guide to the Wikimedia projects. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:02, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

You are receiving this message because you voiced your opinion at the Request for Comment on the Wikimedia Travel Guide.

The proposed naming poll opened a few days ago and you can vote for as many of the proposed names as you wish, if you are eligible. Please see Travel Guide/Naming Process for full details on voting eligibility and how the final name will be selected. Voting will last for 14 days, and will terminate on 16 October at 06:59:59 UTC.

Today, we have 562 signatures here on Meta, and another 61 on change.org, for a total of 623 signatures. Volunteers have fully translated it into 16 languages, and begun other translations. This far exceeds my most optimistic hopes about how many might sign the letter -- I would have been pleased to gain 200 siguatures -- but new signatures continue to come.

I believe this is a significant moment for Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Very rarely have I seen large numbers of people from multiple language and project communities speak with a unified voice. As I understand it, we are unified in a desire for the Wikimedia Foundation to respect -- in actions, in addition to words -- the will of the community who has built the Wikimedia projects for the benefit of all humanity. I strongly believe it is possible to innovate and improve our software tools, together with the Wikimedia Foundation. But substantial changes are necessary in order for us to work together smoothly and productively. I believe this letter identifies important actions that will strongly support those changes.

Have you been discussing these issues in your local community? If so, I think we would all appreciate an update (on the letter's talk page) about how those discussions have gone, and what people are saying. If not, please be bold and start a discussoin on your Village Pump, or in any other venue your project uses -- and then leave a summary of what kind of response you get on the letter's talk page.

Finally, what do you think is the right time, and the right way, to deliver this letter? We could set a date, or establish a threshold of signatures. I have some ideas, but am open to suggestions.

Thank you for your engagement on this issue, and please stay in touch. -Pete F (talk) 18:29, 26 August 2014 (UTC)